John McCain from Pardoned POW to Republican In Name Only Part 2

John McCain from Pardoned POW to Republican In Name Only Part 2

Arizona Politics:

In 1982, McCain ran as a Republican for an open seat in Arizona’s 1st congressional district. In 1983, McCain was elected to lead the incoming group of Republican representatives, and was assigned to the House Committee on Interior Affairs.

McCain won re-election to the House easily in 1984, and gained a spot on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Congressional Politics:

McCain’s Senate career began in January 1987. He became embroiled in a scandal during the 1980s, as one of five United States senators comprising the so-called Keating Five (five US Senators accused of improperly intervening in 1987 on behalf of Charles H. Keating, Jr., Chairman of the Lincoln Savings and Loan Association, which was the target of a regulatory investigation by the Federal Home Loan Bank Board (FHLBB) which subsequently backed off taking action against Lincoln who collapsed in 1989, at a cost of over $3 billion to the federal government. Some 23,000 Lincoln bondholders were defrauded and many investors lost their life savings. The substantial political contributions Keating had made to each of the senators, totaling $1.3 million, attracted considerable public and media attention.[1]) In April 1986, McCain’s wife and father-in-law also invested $359,000 in a Keating shopping center, before the savings and loan scandal broke. [2]

As a member of the 1991–1993 Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs, chaired by fellow Vietnam War veteran and Democrat, John Kerry, McCain investigated the Vietnam War POW/MIA issue, to determine the fate of U.S. service personnel listed as missing in action during the Vietnam War. The committee’s unanimous report stated there was “no compelling evidence that proves that any American remains alive in captivity in Southeast Asia.”[3]

McCain and the POW Cover-Up
The “war hero” candidate buried information about POWs left behind in Vietnam.

The sum of the secrets McCain has sought to hide is not small. There exists a telling mass of official documents, radio intercepts, witness depositions, satellite photos of rescue symbols that pilots were trained to use, electronic messages from the ground containing the individual code numbers given to airmen, a rescue mission by a special forces unit that was aborted twice by Washington—and even sworn testimony by two Defense secretaries that “men were left behind.” This imposing body of evidence suggests that a large number—the documents indicate probably hundreds—of the U.S. prisoners held by Vietnam were not returned when the peace treaty was signed in January 1973.

Very few Americans are aware of the POW story and of McCain’s role in keeping it out of public view and denying the existence of abandoned POWs. That is because McCain has hardly been alone in his campaign to hide the scandal. The Arizona senator, now the Republican candidate for president, has actually been following the lead of every White House since Richard Nixon’s, and thus of every CIA director, Pentagon chief, and national security adviser, not to mention Dick Cheney, who was George H.W. Bush’s Defense secretary. Their biggest accomplice has been an indolent press, particularly in Washington.

A 1990 brief and simple document that started in the House of Representatives called “the Truth Bill” was proposed legislation that would have compelled complete transparency about prisoners and missing men. However it was bitterly opposed by the Pentagon and McCain and the bill went nowhere. It was reintroduced the following year but again disappeared. A few months later, a new measure, known as “the McCain Bill,” suddenly appeared, creating a bureaucratic maze from which only a fraction of documents could emerge—only records that revealed no POW secrets. The McCain bill became law in 1991 and remains so today. Later that year, the Senate Select Committee was created, where Kerry and McCain ultimately worked together to bury evidence.

McCain was also instrumental in amending the Missing Service Personnel Act, which had been strengthened in 1995 by POW advocates to include criminal penalties, saying, “Any government official who knowingly and willfully withholds from the file of a missing person any information relating to the disappearance or whereabouts and status of a missing person shall be fined as provided in Title 18 or imprisoned not more than one year or both.” A year later, in a closed House-Senate conference on an unrelated military bill, McCain, at the behest of the Pentagon, attached a crippling amendment to the act, stripping out its only enforcement teeth, the criminal penalties, and reducing the obligations of commanders in the field to speedily search for missing men and to report the incidents to the Pentagon.[4]

In 1997, McCain became chairman of the powerful Senate Commerce Committee; he was criticized for accepting funds from corporations and businesses under the committee’s purview.

In November 1998, McCain won re-election to a third Senate term and a short 10 months later on September 27, 1999 announced his candidacy for president. His campaign staging included “a fight to take our government back from the power brokers and special interests, and return it to the people and the noble cause of freedom it was created to serve”. With little hope of overcoming Texas Governor George W. Bush’s delegate lead, McCain withdrew from the race on March 9, 2000.

In May 2001, McCain began breaking with the new George W. Bush administration on a number of matters, including HMO reform, climate change, and gun legislation and was one of only two Senate Republicans to vote against the Bush tax cuts. However after the September 11, 2001 attacks, McCain supported Bush and the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan. He and Democratic senator Joe Lieberman wrote the legislation that created the 9/11 Commission, while he and Democratic senator Fritz Hollings co-sponsored the Aviation and Transportation Security Act that federalized airport security.

“JOHN McCAIN FUNDED BY GEORGE SOROS SINCE 2001,” noting that McCain founded the Alexandria, Va.-based Reform Institute as a vehicle to receive funding from George Soros’ Open Society Institute, Teresa Heinz Kerry’s Tides Foundation and several other prominent ‘non-profit’ organizations. McCain used the institute to promote his political agenda and provide compensation to key campaign operatives between elections.” [5]

The July 6, 2001, homepage of the Reform Institute archived on the Internet lists founder McCain as chairman of the group’s advisory committee. Financial contributors while McCain was chairman of the Reform Institute also have included the Educational Foundation of America, a group that supports abortion and opposes drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve. Arianna Huffington, syndicated columnist and creator of the HuffingtonPost.com, has served on the Reform Institute’s advisory committee since the group’s inception. [6]

In between the two separate $100,000 contributions Cablevision made to the Reform Institute, McCain, then chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, wrote a letter to the Federal Communications Commission supporting Cablevision’s desire to continue packaging customer TV programming in a manner more profitable to Cablevision.

In this period of time, McCain worked with Vicki Iseman, a lobbyist representing telecommunications companies, including Cablevision. [7]

In 2004, McCain was re-elected as senator by his widest margin of 77%. By the mid 2000s, the increased Indian gaming that McCain had helped bring about was a $23 billion industry. He was twice chairman of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, in 1995–1997 and 2005–2007, and his Committee helped expose the Jack Abramoff Indian lobbying scandal.

McCain formally announced his intention to run for President of the United States on April 25, 2007 against battling Democratic choices Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. McCain delivered his concession speech on November 4 noting the historic and special significance of Obama becoming the nation’s first African American president.

In February 2008, The Post and The New York Times published stories alleging McCain had had an improper relationship with lobbyist Vicki Iseman. The stories both related that the senator had developed a close relationship with the lobbyist who had business before the Commerce Committee, which he chaired. Iseman was in her early 30s when the relationship began in the late 1990s, and McCain was in his early 60s. [8]

[She] had been turning up with him at fund-raisers, visiting his offices and accompanying him on a client’s corporate jet. Convinced the relationship had become romantic, some of his top advisers intervened to protect the candidate from himself — instructing staff members to block the woman’s access, privately warning her away and repeatedly confronting him, several people involved in the campaign said on the condition of anonymity. [9]

McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign staff includes several prominent lobbyists, despite the senator’s claim to be a campaign reform crusader whose goal is to take money out of politics. McCain’s 2000 and 2008 campaign manager Rick Davis took a six-figure salary as president of the Soros-funded Reform Institute in the intervening years and managed his own lobby firm of Davis, Manafort & Freeman in Alexandria, Va., operating at the same building in a suite down the hall from the Reform Institute.

By 2009, McCain was siding more often with his Republican Party on closely divided votes than ever before in his senatorial career. His opposition to topics such as: the Obama economic stimulus package of 2009, Supreme Court nomination of Sonia Sotomayor and being strongly opposed the Obama health care plan resulted in his emergence as a leader of the Republican party.

In 2011, McCain continued to be the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee as the Arab Spring (a revolutionary wave of both violent and non-violent demonstrations, protests, riots, coups, foreign interventions, and civil wars in North Africa and the Middle East that began on 17 December 2010 in Tunisia with the Tunisian Revolution. The Tunisian Revolution effect spread strongly to five other countries: Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Syria and Bahrain, where either the regime was toppled or major uprisings and social violence occurred, including civil wars or insurgencies. Sustained street demonstrations took place in Morocco, Iraq, Algeria, Iranian Khuzestan, Lebanon, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman and Sudan.[10]) He was an especially vocal supporter of the 2011 military intervention in Libya. In April of that year he visited the Anti-Gaddafi forces and National Transitional Council in Benghazi.

In 2012, McCain gained attention for defending State Department aide Huma Abedin against charges brought by a few House Republicans that she had ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.

Huma Abedin and the Muslim Brotherhood: Bachmann vs. McCain

Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-MN) is at the center of a firestorm over her request that the State, Homeland Security, Defense and Justice Departments, investigate potential “policies and activities that appear to be the result of influence operations conducted by individuals and organizations associated with the Muslim Brotherhood.” This is an entirely legitimate call, as Bachmann abundantly illustrated in a 16-page letter to Muslim Congressman Keith Ellison (D-MN), laying out the reasons for her concerns. Yet even Senator John McCain (R-AZ), who should know better, has upbraided Bachmann, criticizing her for including Hillary Clinton’s top aide, Huma Abedin, among those she noted for having Brotherhood ties.

McCain declared in a statement on the Senate floor that “recently, it has been alleged that Huma, a Muslim American, is part of a nefarious conspiracy to harm the United States by unduly influencing U.S. foreign policy at the Department of State in favor of the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist causes.”[11]

In May 2013, he staged a visit to rebel forces inside Syria (a civil war that had begun in 2011 that McCain had repeatedly argued for the U.S. to intervene militarily in the conflict on the side of the anti-government forces). He called for arming the Free Syrian Army with heavy weapons and for the establishment of a no-fly zone over the country. Following reports that two of the people he posed for pictures with had been responsible for the kidnapping of eleven Lebanese Shiite pilgrims the year before, McCain disputed one of the identifications and said he had not met directly with the other.

In secret trip to Syria, Sen. John McCain hears rebels’ pleas for help

The rebel leaders who met with Mr. McCain asked for help in the establishment of a no-fly zone, delivery of anti-aircraft weapons and U.S. airstrikes on military targets associated with the government of Mr. Assad and on Hezbollah, the militant Shiite Muslim movement based in neighboring Lebanon. Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, has said his militias are committed to helping Mr. Assad defeat the rebels, many of whom are members of Sunni Muslims factions.

Mr. McCain’s visit was “very important and very useful, especially at this time,” Gen. Salem Idris, leader of the Supreme Military Council of the Free Syrian Army stated. “We need American help to have change on the ground; we are now in a very critical situation.” The rebel troops are running low on ammunition and don’t have weapons capable of countering the Assad government’s fighter planes, rebel leaders told Mr. McCain. [12]

Following the 2013 Ghouta chemical weapons attack (in Ghouta, Syria during the Syrian Civil War, in the early hours of 21 August 2013, two opposition-controlled areas in the suburbs around Damascus, Syria were struck by rockets containing the chemical agent sarin. Estimates of the death toll range from at least 281 people to 1,729. The attack was the deadliest use of chemical weapons since the Iran–Iraq War. [13]), McCain argued again for strong American military action against the government of the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, and in September 2013 cast a Foreign Relations committee vote in favor of Obama’s request to Congress that it authorize a military response. Also during 2013, McCain was a member of a bi-partisan group of senators, the “Gang of Eight” (Sen. Michael Bennet, D-CO, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-IL, Sen. Robert Menendez, D-NJ, Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-NY, Sen. Jeff Flake, R-AZ, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-SC, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-FL and Sen. John McCain, R-AZ [14]), which announced principles for another try at comprehensive immigration reform. The resulting Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act of 2013 passed the Senate by a 68–32 margin.

These developments and some other negotiations showed that McCain now had improved relations with the Obama administration, including the president himself, as well as with Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and that he had become the leader of a power center in the Senate for cutting deals in an otherwise bitterly partisan environment. They also led some observers to conclude that the “maverick” McCain had returned. [15]

When we return in part 3, we will continue with McCain’s Syrian exploits and his 2013 visits to Kiev as a supporter of the Euromaidan and the 2014 Ukrainian revolution.

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Post Comments:

From a US Navy Aviator who served with McCain: TRUE!! AND. . he LIED about it!! RESPECTFULLY, you NEED to have this conversation with some Naval Aviators and officers of that era!!! *I* am ONE of those and KNOW the “true story” of Admiral McCain’s little thug son, John!

McCain was a traitor and collaborator, while being held captive. He was given preferential treatment, due to the fact that his captors felt he was ‘royalty’, due to his family ‘connections’. They didn’t understand why someone SO ‘connected’ was putting himself in ‘harm’s way’. Different culture than ours.

His “shoot down” was self-induced, as he DISOBEYED ORDERS and flew well below the ‘floor’, getting himself shot down. There were several other jets on that particular mission and HE was the only one shot down, because the others obeyed their orders!

His ENTIRE life has been one of disrespect of orders and authority, believing himself bullet-proof, due to his ‘family name’ and his dad and grand dad being HIGH ranking Navy Admirals!

His ‘nickname’ in his HS yearbook was “Punk” and he displayed that behavior as he went on to the USNA, where he robbed someone, more deserving, of a slot in his class, due to the ‘influence’ of his father.

He SHOULD have been expelled, several times, but the folks at USNA did not want to go up against dad. He graduated FIFTH FROM THE BOTTOM in his class . . but STILL ended up going to Pensacola for flight [email protected]! His classmates who actually ‘made the grade’ were aghast when he showed up down there.

His flight grades were well below acceptable and he should have been run out of there too . . he was an ABYSMAL aviator . . crashing on base leg at Corpus for carrier qualification training. . he had been out drinking the night before and FELL ASLEEP after turning base leg and ‘configuring’ for landing . . he crashed ‘wings level’ and straight ahead into Corpus Bay . . too bad for us he wasn’t over land . . story would have ended there.

He destroyed two other A/C after arriving in the Fleet . . before being shot down.

His nickname in Hanoi was “Songbird”. . due to the information he willingly gave his captors. . tactical stuff. .like ‘routes, altitudes’, etc., that our guys used to fly from the boat to their targets and he got several of my fellow aviators shot down and killed. He recorded 32+ propaganda bits (a la Tokyo Rose) to be played for our enlisted troops . . to undermine their moral.

The bogus ‘story’ about not coming home early, when he could have, is just common sense. He KNEW he would have been ‘court martialed’ IF he had accepted any kind of early release, based upon his ‘family connections’.

After his release, his Navy ‘flying career’ SHOULD have been over, based upon his permanent injuries, but, his dad intimidated a flight surgeon and he wrongly got back his flight medical status, when ANYONE else would NOT have ‘passed’ with his ‘condition’. He was ‘awarded’ the position of XO at the Navy’s largest training squadron, VA-174 at NAS Cecil and when the CO moved on, he was ‘selected’, over MANY more qualified officers, to become CO. .he used his position as XO and CO to take young (junior) female pilots on X-Country flights and screwed their brains out.

I was in the Reserves, flying around the country at that time and it WAS the talk of the flight line !! EVERYONE knew what he was doing . . THAT is ILLEGAL in the military and he SHOULD have been convicted at Court Martial for ‘fraternization’ . .INSTEAD . .daddy got him moved out of the squadron and put in charge of the Navy’s “Liaison” in DC . . along with a VERY early promotion to Captain . . the rest, as they say, is history.

John McCain IS a scum bag . . a DISGRACE to the uniform we wore and his spots did not change when he became a politician!

Do a GOOGLE . . there is a LOT more stuff out there. .BUT, this snippet, below, is REALLY DAMNING . . there are some ‘heavy hitter’, respected politicians and leaders on there, calling McCain the treasonous SCUM he IS!! [999]

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Sinner's Prayer Of Repentance
“Have mercy on me, O God,
according to Your unfailing love;
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blot out my transgressions.
Wash away all my iniquity
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For I know my transgressions,
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